Quote of the Day: Don’t Bother Me With Fine Distinctions Edition

“Since Sandy Hook, there have been at least 136 other school shootings in America, an average of one a week, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that advocates for stricter gun control. Some of these are isolated, targeted incidents or cases where a body was found on a playground or in a parking lot. Others involve kids bringing a gun to school in a backpack. Most of those shootings have resulted in injuries, not deaths—but that distinction doesn’t give me much comfort.” – Cynthia Leonor Garza, A Mother’s Fear Post-Sandy Hook [via theatlantic.com] [h/t JP]

iirc when they were examined, one of them was like 3miles away(I could look, but even with facts not like they listen)
same street name but different extension (Blvd vs Drive vs Road vs etc etc etc) confuses them too

And here is why we may not win by arguing facts and logic. Those terms mean nothing to the anti’s…they are willing to lie, distort, cheat and make stuff up…whatever it takes.

To all those that say we should not OC in t-shirts or with messy hair (for example) because they will present us in an unfavorable light, here you go. This is what they are willing to do. The truth does not matter to them.

The reason to conduct yourself in a respectable, clean-cut fashion isn’t to convince the screaming hoplophobes – you’re right, they’re going to make shit up no matter what – it’s to provide positive examples that fence-sitters can see, to hopefully bring them to our side, or at least give them reason to question the lies they’ve been fed.

That said, anyone who says you shouldn’t OC if your hair is messy is probably an idiot…

“it’s to provide positive examples that fence-sitters can see, to hopefully bring them to our side, or at least give them reason to question the lies they’ve been fed.”

I don’t discount this at all.

My comment was very specifically pointed at the “give the antis fuel to misrepresent us” mantra. That crowd does not seem to grasp the notion that the antis will misrepresent us (and any relevant data) it takes to promulgate their “control” agenda.

I am beginning to wonder if we don’t actually need both:
– respectable looking people demonstrating the responsible use of arms (OCing to demonstrate); AND,
– something flamboyant to chum the sharks.

Imagine two nearly identical demonstrations/marches/protests:
1. – crowd of open carriers wearing tuxedos, handing out pamphlets and carrying signs; and,
2. – same as #1 with one guy OCing in boxer-shorts.

#1 would collect “impressions” of the dozens/hundreds of people physically present in the venue; however, the media and Moms would not contribute any additional impressions via news media or press-releases.

#2 would bait the media and the Moms suckering them into giving us the publicity we need to expand the universe of impressions.

This is the conception. How far can you take it? If the one guy is waring “long red woolies” the media and Moms won’t take the bait. The one guy in boxers might not do it either. Would he have to ware briefs? A thong? I’m not sure. Nor am I serious about using an array of underwear as the “chum” to invite the attention we need.

Time, place, context; these are all critical. Recall the Civil Rights marches of the 1960s. Remember the images: hundreds of black people. Every male in a white shirt, tie and dark dress trousers. Every female in a white blouse, dark skirt, hat. One or two of them passing on the sidewalk would have attracted no attention whatsoever. But HUNDREDS marching down the STREET. At that time in history, in that place, the South, this image looked like it bordered on a RIOT. Just close enough to bate the Southern sheriffs to bring in the dogs and fire hoses. That combination – with the bait supplied mostly by the segregationists themselves – brought in the media and public attention.

Opposition to the Viet Nam war became much more rowdy.

Marches for gay rights became down-right obscene.

They all worked! I do NOT propose that we adopt any of these tactics literally. Caucasians in white shirts and ties and dress trousers would NOT have the same impact in 2015 that blacks created in the 1960s South. Doesn’t translate. Nor am I suggesting that “long-haired creepy people” or naked-body-painted genitals would achieve the desired effect. Rather, I’m saying that there is something to be learned from these relatively successful tactics in prior struggles (entirely irrespective of one’s opinions of the merits of their objectives) that we need to learn.

Americans will tolerate a great deal of raucous or tasteless optics framed as political protest. We PotG are a timid lot.

Really isn’t such (or much, let’s say) a thing as a fencesitter. That presupposes that there are people out there involved, engaged, interested in this struggle, but for whatever reason remain undecided and open to persuasion. Not exactly.

There are advocates and there are antis, and there are people who never think about any of this until something big happens. Long term recruitment to 2A thinking and the shooting sports is important, as is post-crisis availability dispel myths and furnish facts.

However, fretting over dressing a certain way or not sporting certain logos, all in the hopes of getting through to people who aren’t even in the conversation, seems silly to me.

Bad things have happened since we walked on this planet, why do people expect safety and comfort like it’s a given?
Not that anyone wants those things to happen but human beings are terrible to each other.
In my school we crawled under desks because of the nukes.
These days i prep my 7yr old to scope out every room for cover and concealment…..so what?
Medevil times to present, you are aware and safer or not.
Welcome to the world humans.

Because that’s the fantasy world lie they’ve been told pretty much since birth…or at least since their parents sent them to be raised in an education institution owned, paid for and operated by The State.

Public school does not “ruin” every kid; but it sure tries to.

They have been taught for years that the world CAN be safe…if only you put your faith and trust in The State. Now that they have bought into this worldview, they have to defend it. It is very difficult to hear and learn that your entire belief system is….corrupt.

They should do something about all these ‘school shootings’. If they designated schools as ‘Gun Free Zones’ and passed laws that made it a felony to bring guns on to school property that would put an end to all of this ‘gun violence’ in schools.

In zip codes where registered sex offenders cannot live because EVERYWHERE is near a school, every shooting, farting, spitting, and urination happens in or near a school too. So if you claim that every shooting near a school is a school shooting, then every shooting is a school shooting.

Someone once prepared maps of several large California cities, and although there are places that are not within 1000 feet of a school, they are few and far between. In fact, you cannot legally travel around these towns without a CCW or your guns in locked cases, which means almost any shooting is within a “school zone.” Which is of course the intent of the 1000′ exclusionary zone.

If you tell a big enough lie; loud enough and long enough; and, pretty soon people will believe it.

We denounce such lies with periodic articles; however, the denunciations are not as impactful as the lies. We need a more compelling response.

The past 25 years have generated a wealth of resources to make our case statistically and rhetorically. Unfortunately, these are not catalogued in a readily accessible form. I have seen several web sights that have undertaken a serious effort to assemble such a catalogue. Unfortunately, these do not seem to be maintained. And, much of their content appears to be more-so argumentative vs. fact based. While applauding these pioneering efforts I have not seen any sites that have maintained the momentum needed to stand-up to the well funded professional resources of the Antis.

I wonder if TTAG is now well positioned – as a leading blog – to add to its pages one or more resources that it can afford to maintain (with user contributed support).

Identify a number of themes and develop a set of resources under each one. To illustrate, gun accidents. Fatalities; and, injuries. Under each, compile links to the available government, pier-reviewd and credible academic statistics and studies. Also, compile links to the Anti’s mis-representations of the topic with a compare-and-contrast. Which side seems to convey the unvarnished truth vs. a distortion intended to achieve an emotional appeal?

Some data is really hard to get; such as – for illustration – the number of accidents and contextual circumstances. The Antis make-up whatever number that suits their agenda, whether from whole cloth or compiled from enumerated sources that never really pan-out if you take the trouble to drill into them. To counter-act this tactic I suggest the following technique.

Our page says that CDC reports # fatalities and ## injuries total in each of the following years . . . We have compiled, from new stories and police reports, # fatalities and ## injuries representing X% and Y% of the CDCs totals. A synopsis of each of the incidents we’ve compiled appears on an adjacent page. Facilities are provided to provide various slice-and-dice subtotals that may interest viewers. For example:
# occur in conjunction with hunting
# occur in conjunction with shooting ranges
# occur in or around homes with the following breakdown of injured persons by age:
# 0 – 5 years of age
# 6 – 10 years
# 11 – 16 years
# 17 – 21 years
# . . .
The distribution of incidents by Metropolitan Statistical District indicates that:
# – occur in rural areas predominantly populated by whites
# – occur in suburban areas predominantly populated by whites
# – occur in inner-city areas predominantly populated by blacks
# – occur in areas – rural, suburban and inner-city – predominantly populated by Hispanics

It’s much harder to spin the data of accidents when it emerges that most accidents were either: hunting; or, black inner-city young-adults. I don’t, of course, know what such data would reveal. We don’t have it readily accessible to us. It’s entirely conceivable that we might learn something over which we – the PotG – must take responsibility. E.g., for the share of accidents that occur among 6 – 16 year-old children and adolescents in predominantly white suburban areas. We are responsible for minimizing these accidents with safe-storage and supervision. Conversely, if the bulk of accidents are occurring outside the control of OFWGs, then controlling OFWG’s use of guns doesn’t do anything much to address the real source of the problem.

My expectation is that the editors would find about half of the data relatively accessible from authoritative government sources. E.g., total counts, ages and sex of victims. However, these data will lack context that could be supplied by the compilation of incident synopses: rural/suburban/inner-city; predominant race of venue; shooter is another child or a gang-member.

I think we really need a resource to which we can point legislators and voters to effectively debunk the anti’s myths. If the reader takes an interest in some theme – e.g., accidents – and comes to understand the facts from our site; and, then, sees how anti’s propaganda has distorted the fact; she will become skeptical. Perhaps she will pick – at random – another topic – suicide or homicide. Again, we present the facts with our analysis vs. the Anti’s propaganda. Once the seed of skepticism is planted it is apt to grow on its own.

Clearly, this sort of ambitious effort must be kept-up. The editors and contributors need to bring the data up-to-date every year or two. The internet is filled with really excellent articles and reports from the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s; but, if the data is more than 5 years old it’s apt to be discounted (unjustifiably) by the casual reader.

There’s a link http://www.shootingtracker.com, that links to the local news paper reports of local mass shootings (four or more people shot but not necessarily killed) in a years time.

So far for 2015 it’s up to about 296 incidents. What is obvious after reading almost seventy of the stories is that the vast majority, eight out of ten, are gang related and almost exclusively involving our protected class.

I’ll keep working through the stories, but I doubt the percentages will change much.

I have a number of concerns here.
1. – obscurity of any good sites. A site like TTAG might achieve great prominence giving us visibility;
2. – maintenance – Deep pockets could keep-up and continue to build a central site.
3. – centrality – Deep pockets could collect all the available data or link to the sites of the original authors
4. – format and tools – Deep pockets could afford slice-and-dice tools better than any single site.

The difference between lies and truth is a fairy significant distinction. Which she prefers to ignore.

Liberals can twist anything. They’ll even re-define the meaning of words… The extremes to which they will go exposes the fact that they’re not just lying, they know they’re lying and they say it anyway.

We had one of the school shootings near us. It was just after the Sandy Hook affair.

Guy killed his wife at her workplace. Which was the school cafeteria. At 5am. While she was outside the building. On the opposite side of the TX-sized high school from the athletic fields where the cross country team was getting ready to practice.

Even if that 136 figure were accurate (and we all know it’s ridiculously inflated), where’s the mention of the literally hundreds of millions of times that a kid went to school and nothing bad happened since Sandy Hook?

Something bad DOES happen to every child, every time they enter the government “schools.” They are exposed to all of the lies, propaganda, and socialist indoctrination that constitutes the entire purpose for those “schools.” They are dehumanized, manipulated and distorted to become neither boys nor girls, but some insane politically correct other. More and more, the children are being drugged to further this obscene process.

Why would anyone who cares the smallest bit about their children actually send them to be so manipulated and destroyed? Why do people continue to think it is somehow a good thing to pay the taxes that fund these abominations? What good thing is ever produced from force, fraud and theft?

Important as it is, guns are a secondary issue here. Get the children OUT of the theft supported, government indoctrination centers.

Same kind everyone has, everywhere. Government “school” – teaching children that Lincoln was a hero, among the new and ever increasing lies about history in general. That boys need to be silent zombies, emasculated and drugged. That six year olds should know how to put a condom on a cucumber… but that a tease or a kiss is “sexual harassment” and requires handcuffs and judicial intervention. And now, there’s nothing for them to do on the playground, since all “touching” is prohibited, and most games that present the slightest risk of even hard feelings are now banned…

I could go on for pages with the lies, fraud, forced and prohibited behavior. Critical thinking and serious questioning of “authority” is carefully exterminated.

The children who escape 12 years of this torture and abuse are few, and an outright miracle.

As a fellow human being, parent and teacher she needs to feel her feelings and then move on. Really imagine the worse possible thing. Then find ways to move on. Intellectually her fears make no sense. But her fear is real to her.

Some of us have the facts. Others don’t. Child abduction numbers are huge. They include other spouse grabs, your daughter’s boyfriend pulling her by the arm around the corner of the gym to argue. What do we hear when we hear child abduction? Stranger in a van snatching little Sally of the sidewalk. That number is infinitesimal.

When the uproar was happening about the parents that let their kids walk home unattended from the park in suburban MD I heard one thing over and over.

Parents would say, “I couldn’t bear how I’d feel if something happened to my child.” Lets dissect that. It’s not about the child at all. The parent is trying to avoid the feeling she would have!
This can mean some unrealistic restrictions on her children as they age and the passing of laws that don’t make her children safe.

An alternative is – perhaps – also worth evaluation. Remember the2004 Beslan school attack in Russia? Similar school attacks in Israel? What’s the defense plan should such attacks break-out in the US? If you can envision the horror of another Sandy Hook are you also capable of imagining a dozen Beslan attacks in America?

How about we muster the countless retired OFWGs with their shotguns and AR-15s to guard the schools in their neighborhoods?

How does your dis-armament program fit in with the maintenance of a “well-regulated” OFWG militia?

How about enrolling OFWGs in a “call tree” that could be invoked by the principal of each school? A 9-11 like newscast of an outbreak of school attacks could be answered within an hour by an effective armed guard team at a majority of schools in the country. The cost would be next-to-nothing and it would practically foreclose the effectiveness of such a tactic by terrorists (of any sect whatsoever).

Well Cynthia Leonor Garza. The day you stop being a ignorant fear mongering woman you might realize real women, the one less than 300 years ago actually fought anyone who tried to harm their children. So continue to boo hoo, bust out the word count and when you decide you want to be in the tribe of lawful self protection, we’ll leave the light on for ya.

Wait. Is this Cynthia G. that wrote the above quoted article for The Atlantic?

If so, would you be willing to engage in some Q&A regarding your article?

First Question: Where do you get the number of 136 “School Shootings” that you quote? Is Everytown your only source of information, or have you vetted that data in any way at all?

Second Question: How would you respond to the assertion that NON-SHOOTINGS are included in the dataset as “school shootings”? Does that give you pause to trust the data at all?

Third Question: Are you genuinely concerned with solving the problem of violence in schools, or is the concern more about “guns?” If guns were completely banned (as they currently are on most school grounds), what would your next proposed solution be to ongoing violence in schools? (That is, guns are ALREADY banned in schools, yet you assert the violence continues despite said bans and claim that additional bans on guns would help…what if guns were COMPLETELY gone across the board, and violence in schools still happened…what then?)

And you know why none of them ever made it to the news? Because most of those were gang-related shootings near inner city schools. The news can’t trump these shootings because it doesn’t fit their narrative.

As a seasoned home-schooler, I’d say the problem lies in allowing other people to dictate how and where your child is educated. ESPECIALLY allowing people who don’t live near you make those decisions; school should be local only. It’s funny how the less we participate in COMMUNITY, the more we seem to participate in COMMUNISM.

I’ve occasionally wondered why they don’t just count a “school shooting” as any time a firearm is discharged for whatever reason in any location that is within the boundaries of a school district. Since all of populated America has been divvied up between the schools, that should give them a suitably prodigious number to terrify the sheeple with.

OK, so this idiot woman wants to count every death at a school a shooting. So every time some frat boy dies from alcohol poisoning at a college or some old custodian dies of cirrhosis in the school boiler room this is a reason to ban guns? By that logic every time a doctor kills one of his patients by medical misadventure we should call for banning swimming pools, cause Di-Hydrogen Monoxide kills.

It doesn’t give me much comfort either. Nor does it comfort me that 136 is a wildly inflated number.

What would comfort me is knowing that willing, motivated people (for instance, some of their teachers) were able to defend my children (and yours) against evil if it rears its ugly head.

But people like you and the Everytown charlatans, Ms. Garza, would not only destroy that small comfort but make it easier for the perpetrator of some unpredictable future act of violence to destroy my children (and yours).

Your fear doesn’t make you special (it seems it’s only making you stupid).

You can tell a lot about a person by what she’s willing to defend. My wife would kill to protect her own children (and yours) if she had to. But you’d rather pretend that wolves don’t have teeth. That doesn’t actively defend anyone. It’s rank cowardice.

You and your ghostwriters at the Atlantic can leave your own little lambs out as bait for wolves if it makes you feel better…teach them to cower against the wall like compliant little targets if you think it helps…but I’ll be goddamned if I let you do that to MY children.

With such a distinct and terrible pattern as that, you’d think they would learn… But, nope. Keep doing what causes it instead! Slaughter the children, for the children! Helplessness will make it stop! Being an easy target will make it stop! Ignore reality!

Wait, so some of these were POTENTIAL shootings, as opposed to actual shootings?

OMG! In 2006 I was in a near mid-air collision, “near” being 500-600 yards! I don’t think most of the passengers were even aware of it, because I was in a 737 and the other craft was a business jet; it was at the same altitude, and at 180 degrees of our own course. It was close enough that I could have told if the pilot was wearing shades, if it hadn’t whizzed by at over 1000 relative knots.

I remember a report on CNN of all places that took MDA to task about their 74- the number of shootings they claimed at the time in June 2014- shootings, and they found only 15 out of those 74 could be considered actual school shootings, but nothing the scope of SH.

And besides, if the numbers WERE true, don’t you think they’d have 24/7 coverage of all those shootings on TV?

“And yet, Sandy Hook somehow disconnected the rational part of me from the emotional, and since then, I haven’t been able to shake the anxious feeling that overcomes me when I get near a school.”

Burried in the article is this gem. The problem is the author ( I know we knew this all along, but interesting to see her admit it), not guns, not school shootings. She has disregarded the rational and moved to purely emotional. Think she will snap herself out of it and think about it critically? She is close, right there. No? Yeah, probably not.

I am from the northeast and I have never shot anyone. That is more than Dick Cheney can say. I am a veteran. The 2nd is so we can protect ourselves FROM the government.
No double standards put DC politicians on Obamacare and SS.Thanks for your support and vote. Pass the word. mrpresident2016.com